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Friday, May 12, 2017

Late PIE ground zero now obvious; location of PIE homeland still uncertain, but...

All of the post-Middle Neolithic samples from the recent Mittnik et al. and Saag et al. preprints on the ancient population history of the Baltic region belonged to Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a. And most of them belonged to the R1a-M417 (R1a1a) subclade that makes up almost 100% of the R1a lineages in the world today. This is what the results look like in a table (the sample IDs are of my own design):

Earlier samples from the same region belonged to Y-haplogroups I2a and R1a, but this was a subclade of R1a defined by the YP1272 mutation that is extremely rare today even in Northeastern Europe.
And now shifting our focus west of Scandinavia: all but two of the post-Middle Neolithic samples from around the North Sea from the recent Olalde et al. preprint on the Bell Beaker phenomenon and ancient population history of Northwest Europe belonged to Y-chromosome R1b, and more specifically to the R1b-M269 (R1b1a1a2) subclade, which makes up almost 100% of the R1b lineages in the world today. Here's a table:

Earlier samples from the same region belonged to Y-haplogroups I2a, I, G2a and CF, and most of the instances of I and the CF would probably be classified as I2a if not for missing data.
Interestingly, despite the R1a vs R1b dichotomy between these post-Middle Neolithic obvious newcomers to the Baltic and North Sea regions, respectively, they were very similar in terms of overall genetic structure, obviously closely related, starkly different from Middle Neolithic Northern Europeans, and in all likelihood mainly derived from the same homeland that was not located in Northern Europe.
So can we locate this homeland with any degree of certainty, you might wonder? In fact, you might ask, isn't this a futile search for the time being, as we await ancient DNA from many prehistoric Eurasian populations?
Not at all, because when attempting to answer this question we're bounded by two key constraints: the exceptionally high frequencies of R1a and R1b in the post-Middle Neolithic Baltic and North Sea samples, and their close genetic affinity to earlier and contemporaneous populations from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, part of which is due to significant Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer (CHG) admixture that was lacking in Middle Neolithic Northern Europeans.
Indeed, to date, the Pontic-Caspian steppe is the only region where both R1a and R1b have been found in ancient remains from the same sites dating to the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Eneolithic. Here's a table based on results from Mathieson et al. 2015 and 2017. The R and R1 might really be R1a or R1b if not for missing data.

The Pontic-Caspian steppe also abuts the Caucasus foothills, and we know that CHG admixture was a major feature of its inhabitants from at least the Eneolithic. So odds are, and make no mistake, these are indeed excellent odds, that the homeland we're looking for was on the Pontic-Caspian steppe.
But of course I2a has also been recorded in prehistoric samples from the Pontic-Caspian steppe. So, you might ask, why did the populations migrating out of the steppe belong to R1a and R1b, and why did some of them seemingly carry only R1a while others only R1b? This can be explained by local founder effects on the steppe due to patrilocality. Moreover, it's possible that some groups moving out of the steppe did carry high frequencies of I2a, but they're yet to enter the ancient DNA record. [Edit: Maybe they already have? See here]
Now, the aforementioned post-Middle Neolithic newcomers to the Baltic and North Sea regions are most certainly in large part the direct ancestors of modern-day Northern Europeans, speaking languages belonging to the three daughter branches of late Proto-Indo-European (PIE): Balto-Slavic, Celtic and Germanic. It's highly unlikely that languages ancestral to these present-day languages were spoken by Middle Neolithic farmers, nor introduced into Northern Europe after it was colonized by the migrants from the Pontic-Caspian steppe.
What this strongly suggests is that the Pontic-Caspian steppe was also the late PIE homeland.
But, you might argue, the Pontic-Casian steppe may have just been the expansion point for some of the late PIE language branches. No, that won't work. For one, modern-day populations speaking languages belonging to all other late PIE branches, such as Armenian, Greek, Indo-Iranian and Italic, show signals of the same population expansion from the Pontic-Caspian steppe that gave rise to modern-day Northern Europeans, in the form of Yamnaya-related genome-wide genetic admixture and appreciable frequencies of Y-chromosome haplogroups R1a-M417 and/or R1b-M269.
Some of these signals are certainly due to fairly recent admixture from Northern Europeans, like in much of Greece as a result of the Slavic expansions during the Early Middle Ages, but most cannot be explained in this way.
Secondly, Balto-Slavic, Celtic and Germanic are not more closely related to each other than to some of the other late PIE branches. For instance, Balto-Slavic is considered far more closely related to Indo-Iranian than to Celtic, which is generally seen as a sister branch to Italic. Therefore, if Balto-Slavic and Celtic derive from a homeland on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, then logically this is also where we should look for the origins of Indo-Iranian and Italic.
So as far as the late PIE homeland is concerned, thanks to ancient DNA, the debate is now practically over. But the PIE homeland debate is still wide open, or so we're told.
Apparently, Mathieson et al. 2017 aren't comfortable with putting the PIE homeland on the Pontic-Caspian Steppe because they can't find any evidence in their ancient DNA dataset of a significant migration through the Balkans that would potentially bring Anatolian languages from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to Anatolia. From the paper:

One version of the Steppe Hypothesis of Indo-European language origins suggests that Proto-Indo European languages developed in the steppe north of the Black and Caspian seas, and that the earliest known diverging branch – Anatolian – was spread into Asia Minor by movements of steppe peoples through the Balkan peninsula during the Copper Age around 4000 BCE, as part of the same incursions from the steppe that coincided with the decline of the tell settlements. [51] If this were correct, then one way to detect evidence of it would be the appearance of large amounts of characteristic steppe ancestry first in the Balkan Peninsula, and then in Anatolia. However, our genetic data do not support this scenario. While we find steppe ancestry in Balkan Copper Age and Bronze Age individuals, this ancestry is sporadic across individuals in the Copper Age, and at low levels in the Bronze Age. Moreover, while Bronze Age Anatolian individuals have CHG/Iran Neolithic related ancestry, they have neither the EHG ancestry characteristic of all steppe populations sampled to date [20] , nor the WHG ancestry that is ubiquitous in southeastern Europe in the Neolithic (Figure 1A, Supplementary Data Table 2, Supplementary Information section 1). This pattern is consistent with that seen in northwestern Anatolia [11] and later in Copper Age Anatolia [23], suggesting continuing migration into Anatolia from the East rather than from Europe.

And this...

On the other hand, our data could still be consistent with the Steppe-Balkans-Anatolia route hypothesis model, albeit with constraints. It remains possible that populations dating to around 1600 BCE in the regions where the Indo-European Luwian, Hittite and Palaic languages were spoken did have European hunter-gatherer ancestry. However, our results would require that such ancestry was not ubiquitous in Bronze Age Anatolia, and was perhaps tightly linked to Indo-European speaking groups. We predict that additional insight about the genetic origins of the potential speakers of early Indo-European languages will be obtained when ancient DNA data become available from additional sites in this key period in Anatolia and the Caucasus.

But I'd say the authors are taking that one particular version of the Steppe Hypothesis way too seriously. They might even be implying things that the creator(s) of the said hypothesis never posited.
Why do they seemingly expect a massive surge of steppe admixture into the Balkans during the Copper Age? If the steppe people are just shooting through the Balkans on their way to Anatolia, why would they leave a lot of admixture along the way? And if the locals are abandoning their tell settlements and running for the hills as far away from the oncoming steppe invaders as they can, how exactly would they acquire steppe admixture? Osmosis or what?
The Balkans is not Northern Europe, and the hypothesized migration of the proto-Anatolians from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe to Anatolia through the Balkans was never, as far as I know, meant to parallel the massive Corded Ware expansion across Northern Europe. In other words, why should all of the early Indo-European expansions have been of the same character, especially considering that they moved into such starkly different areas of Eurasia?
Indeed, as Mathieson et al. 2017 point out in the quote above, the evidence for the fleeting presence of steppe peoples in the Copper Age Balkans is in their dataset. For instance, in their Varna 1 sample set from Bulgaria, three out of the five individuals show significant steppe admixture. One of these individuals is almost 50% Yamnaya-like. Surely, there's really no need to expect anything more than that when looking for signals of a proto-Anatolian migration from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe to Anatolia.
In fact, even though I do appreciate the incredible work these guys are doing and the data they're making available to myself and everyone else, I suspect that there's a little bit of, shall we say, schadenfreude going on here.
They sequenced all of three Early Bronze Age Anatolians of obscure origin (are they actually suspected Anatolian speakers, like Luwians?), and apparently it's a big deal that they can't find any steppe admixture in Early Bronze Age Anatolia. Come on.
And then we're offered just three Yamnaya samples from the Pontic Steppe in Ukraine. One happens to be a massive outlier towards the Caucasus. Wow, what are the chances of that? And guess what, all three of these Yamnayans are females, so of course we're left wondering about the Y-haplogroups of the Yamnaya males on the Pontic Steppe. What happened to the males? Next paper, that's what.
Update 19//05/2017: Please note that the authors are not holding back any Yamnaya males from Ukraine for a future paper, as per my claim in the last paragraph above. They used what they had for the time being.
Update 21/05/2017: Actually, I suspect that we already have a population from the Bronze Age steppe in the ancient DNA record with a high frequency of Y-haplogroup I2a. See here.
See also...
R1a-M417 from Eneolithic Ukraine!!!11Ancient herders from the Pontic-Caspian steppe crashed into India: no ifs or butsEastern Europe as a bifurcation hotspot for Y-hg R1Globular Amphora people starkly different from Yamnaya people

It is clear that the Neolithic people of Anatolia and the Balkans had mainly Early Farmer autosomal DNA and mainly Hg G Y chromosomes. However, today the peoples of these regions have high levels of CHG and Hg J2. This shows that there were substantial migrations into these regions from the east after the Neolithic. This needs to be explained regardless of whether it has anything to do with the spread of Indo-European. I am very much looking forward to seeing ancient DNA from these regions from the Late Bronze Age and Classical periods.Recently I have been looking at the Y chromosome data from the Middle East provided by the Family Tree DNA projects. There are a considerable number of examples of R1b M269 from the territories of Armenia and Turkey found mainly in the Armenian Project. The figures for the more stable STRs are generally the same as in European R1b M269 but usually have DYS393=12 (instead of 13). The most significant deviations from the usual STR figures are groups with DYS426=11 (instead of 12), DYS392=14 (instead of 13) or DYS531=12 or 13 (instead of 11). Does anyone know how these examples of R1b M269 are related to the ancient examples from the Yamnaya Culture and elsewhere in Europe?

Wonderful article! Thank you. I truly enjoy your opinions on these academic articles regarding genetics & archaeology. So if the PC Steppes Khavlysk/Yamnaya spoke late PIE, who were the original PIE speakers? I love Dr. David Anthony's THE HORSE THE WHEEL....(and hope get my copy signed next time I'm in the Catskills) and M. Gimbutas( even though she was a little overly generous with the Kurgan model and seemed anti-Russia, the Goddess books were way over the top in my opinion, a product of 1960-70's ideology) EASTERN EUROPEAN PREHISTORY. Davidski, you should write a book!

@david"If the steppe people are just shooting through the Balkans on their way to Anatolia, why would they leave a lot of admixture along the way?"

They cannot shoot through the balkans leaving no trace on their way to Anatolia because ..... of this barrier called the black sea in their Path. you would expect more than traces in staging areas. Perhaps they had amphibious chariots and horses with gills.

"If this were correct, then one way to detect evidence of it would be the appearance of large amounts of characteristic steppe ancestry first in the Balkan Peninsula"

Well, this first argument is pretty lousy. The Hittites probably originated and expanded from Zalpuwa, a city on the Kanesh Delta of the Black Sea.Soooooo, let me be Captain Obvious and suggest that a certain body of water played a role, not marching through the Balkans.

" The Hittites probably originated and expanded from Zalpuwa, a city on the Kanesh Delta of the Black Sea."

IIRC northern Anatolia is mountainous and forested, not densely populated, and was the abodes of Kaskians (which sound like a non-IE tribe). Instead, the IEs of Anatolia expanded across the Konya plain from east to west. That is obvious :)

Are these samples going to be available soon? It's going to be interesting to look at some of them in more detail.

For example, it seems that the Yamnaya samples from Ukraine are just like other Yamnaya samples from further east. If true, this leaves 2 interesting questions:

- Where did the Yamnaya population come from? Not from Ukraine, since Ukraine Neolithic is basically SHG. So either from the North Caucasus itself (if there were EHG there, which we don't have evidence for now) or from the east (where exactly?). In any case, replacing the previous populations of Ukraine.

- Where did the Latvia_LN sample (associated to the CWC, but lacking EEF admixture) come from? It also lacks EHG and instead seems to be something like SHG + CHG. Ukraine was an option, but now that doesn't seem possible. So did CHG go all the way to the Baltic to mix with SHG-like Baltic HGs?

- There is a Ukraine Eneolithic sample (3634-3377 calBCE). This would be a late Sredny Stog sample or whatever it can be called at that pre-Yamnaya period. Interestingly, it looks like a mix of Ukraine_Neolithic and a population intermediate between Anatolia_Neolithic and CHG, so something like Anatolia_Chalcolithic or Iran_Chalcolithic. It's much more western than Yamnaya (probably close to European BA).

It will also be interesting to look at those Chalcolithic outliers from the Balkans to see what kind of admixture they have.

"they can't find any evidence in their ancient DNA dataset of a significant migration through the Balkans that would potentially bring Anatolian languages from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe to Anatolia ...snip...If the steppe people are just shooting through the Balkans on their way to Anatolia...snip"

I think a more likely scenario is pressure from the steppe direction leads to gradual abandonment so- raiding- depopulation- conquestover a sustained time period.

A side effect of that process might be kings in Anatolia deciding to hire some of them as mercenaries and bringing them over by boat (maybe a bit like the Saxon shore in Britain or Normandy in France).

"- There is a Ukraine Eneolithic sample (3634-3377 calBCE). This would be a late Sredny Stog sample or whatever it can be called at that pre-Yamnaya period. Interestingly, it looks like a mix of Ukraine_Neolithic and a population intermediate between Anatolia_Neolithic and CHG, so something like Anatolia_Chalcolithic or Iran_Chalcolithic. It's much more western than Yamnaya (probably close to European BA)."

Could be the answer to the missing component for the Yamna to explain the drift toward Anatolia_N and Levant_N. Lazaridis and alia proposed a mix with Iran_ChL, which was never very convincing.

"A side effect of that process might be kings in Anatolia deciding to hire some of them as mercenaries and bringing them over by boat (maybe a bit like the Saxon shore in Britain or Normandy in France)."

Not a bad for some of them at least. I think that it could explain many things about Hittites, as they seem to emerge in an Hattian city. If a group of mercenaries settled in a city (probably with their wives), and this community stay together, with a limited demographic effect, they could became the majority in less than one century. And the pety king would likely choose some kind of assimilation to that population to stay on the throne.

Not completely absurd if we accept some level of Cultural diffusion.

But, I guess it would be far more difficult to say the same for Luwians.

@Rob, this is the way I look at it. Almost half of the Black Sea, excluding the Sea of Azov, was bordered by (likely) IE-speaking people, or at least Steppe associated people. In time, more southerly locations on the Sea became IE speaking as well.

Also interesting, is that Zalpuwa or Nerik, which is where the Northern Kingdom was, is also the shortest direct distance to Crimea across the Black Sea, in other words, it would have been a point of contact between the North and South.(I mistakenly said River Kanesh, I meant the river at Kanesh that drains into the Black Sea.)

And that is an important clue as well. The Steppe people were boatsmen as well as herders and interestingly, all steppe people had a very high aquatic segment of the diet. So, I'm very lazy, I prefer boat rides over hand to hand combat through the Balkans. ha

You'll find plenty of R1b in this study within the Greek regions of Turkey.https://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-11-69

All the more reason why we can say heavy turnover has occurred in the Balkans post-Neolithic. Take a look at Croats, Serbs, Bulgarians...all heavy R1a-M458/558, I2-M423-L621, and even E-V13 which may have spread with south Slavic languages as well. Unlikely that any of these folks, with the exception of maybe E-V13 were in the Balkans during the Neolithic or even Bronze Age.

What we have is a complicated post-Neolithic scenario of south to north movement of "Farmers" through the Balkans, and north to south movements from Europe, muddled further by migrations within the last 1800 years from Slavic speakers.

@ AWood Yes I'm aware of the recent migrations, which is why the supposition that the steppe ancestry is *not* mostly due to recent admixture is wrong As for R1b, the key is the subtypes. Many historic groups potentially spread it; not just Yamnaya. So overall percentages whilst interesting in themselves do not give clear elucidation

@ Martin Clifford Styan "The figures for the more stable STRs are generally the same as in European R1b M269 but usually have DYS393=12 (instead of 13). The most significant deviations from the usual STR figures are groups with DYS426=11 (instead of 12), DYS392=14 (instead of 13) or DYS531=12 or 13 (instead of 11). Does anyone know how these examples of R1b M269 are related to the ancient examples from the Yamnaya Culture and elsewhere in Europe?"

DYS392=12, DYS426=11, DTS392=14 are R-M269-PF7563. This is the "Jewish cluster", very recent, and which has found a SNP in common with a Bulgarian. The "Jewish cluster" emerged after a bottleneck of 21 SNPs, thus it is introgressed in the Jewish pool from somewhere after the diaspora.Anyway R-M269-PF7563 is deeply rooted in Italy, Sardinia and western Europe.

We don't understand why two lines of descent (practically two men), whose ancestor was 6200 years oldR-L23 PF6404 * L478/PF6403 * L23/S141/PF6534 5700 ybp, TMRCA CI 95% 6900 5500 ybp"formed 6500 ybp, TMRCA 6200 ybpand who gave birth to two lines 5800 years agoR-Z2103 Y4371/Z8128/M12149 * Z2103/CTS1078 * S20902/Z8130+7 SNPs 5500 ybp, TMRCA CI 95% 6600 5100 ybp" class="age"formed 6200 ybp, TMRCA 5800 ybpR-L51 L51/M412/S167/PF6536 * PF6535 * CTS10373/PF6537/FGC39+2 SNPs 5500 ybp, TMRCA CI 95% 6500 5200 ybp" class="age" formed 6200 ybp, TMRCA 5800 ybpif they lived both in Samara, one (Z2103) left descendants in all Eastern Europe and the other (L51) only in Western Europe. 5800 years ago is long before the supposed migration of the steppes people to Germany where we find the Bell Beakers descendants. If L51 lived and had descendants in eastern Europe, why pretty none remained there?But whereas eastern Europe hasn't L51 descendants, western Europe has many old subclades of Z2103 (not counting all the upstream subclades).Isn't it smarter to think that the other way around happened?

From what Dave blogged strong Steppe admixture first appeared in Armenia in the MLBA samples, dated to about 2000 - 900 BC. The earliest attestations of Hittite words in Assyrian sources date to the 19th century BC. So the Steppe admixture would appear just in time - if the Anatolian IEs had taken the route across the Caucasus into Anatolia. It would just seem a little curious that Anatolian was the most divergent IE language family, if it left the steppe that late.

Archaeologically influence from the Balkans into Anatolia, i.e. back-migrations, seem rather plausible at an earlier time, e.g. the fourth millennium BC. But then some steppe admixture would be expected in the Anatolia_EBA samples, if Chalcolithic influence from the Balkans had taken Steppe admixture to western Anatolia.

The Steppe people didn't conquer shit. They were diseased nomads who settled in the frigid north where no intelligent human would choose to live. They built nothing, and created nothing. All they did was rub up on eachother ad infinitum like any of the other lower primitive life forms.

"Archaeologically influence from the Balkans into Anatolia, i.e. back-migrations, seem rather plausible at an earlier time, e.g. the fourth millennium BC. But then some steppe admixture would be expected in the Anatolia_EBA samples"

That's the thing, the period 4000-3300 BC in both Anatolia & the Balkans is something of a dearth, a few local groups here and there, following massive population decline. It doesn;t give the impression of any group expanding or groups unifying into a common horizon.

No one predicated loads of R1b1 in Mesolithic Baltic, Serbia-Romania, and Ukraine. But there are basal forms of R1 in modern Ukraine and Baltic. Then again Iran has even more but it could be a legacy of some type of European migration into Iran which proves not much can be learned from modern DNA.

ADW_1981 replied to a thread The Genomic History of Southeastern Europe - Mathieson, Reich, et al. in Ancient (aDNA) There is also L51+ in a Palestinian and a Yemeni Arab family. It's plausible it moved south to the Levant from someplace like Italy or Greece during...

@ Davidski

If this he/she writes here as AWood, check his mental sanity before permitting him/her to post here...

"In a few individuals from southeastern Europe, we find evidence of steppe-related ancestry far earlier (defined here as a mixture of EHG and similar to the genetic signature of individuals of the later Yamnaya (Figure 1B,D). One individual (ANI163) from the Varna I cemetery dates to 4711-4550 BCE, one (I2181) from nearby Smyadovo dates to 4550-4450 BCE, and a third individual (I1927) from Verteba cave, associated with the Cucuteni-Trypillian complex, dates to 3619-2936 BCE."

They did find some admixture. What was that Anatolian with a possible very slight steppe admixture again?

The Celts fought their way through the Balkans on their eventual way to Anatolia in just a handful of years. I doubt there were many Y chromosomes left behind, outside of the usual rape/pillage contribution. Seems at least plausible that an earlier migration could do the same thing.

If they know the Pontic-Steppe is the IE homeland, why the coy "Late-PIE" term? For certain, they have fore-knowledge of what is to come.

Secondly, it's sloppy to use genetics to refer to "Late-PIE" as there are no written documents for the era they discuss. They can offer support, but they shouldn't be making conclusions. Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic... there are significant differences between these languages, while the case is being made of a cohesive movement of peoples.

Thirdly, the Anatolia/Balkan issue above is no small problem. If they can't demonstrate proof or even a viable argument, it's the weakness that will make the Death Star explode.

Even if you have a few sides of Rubik's cube completed, you don't legitimately complete the puzzle by pulling off the stickers and re-arranging them.

@Azarov DmitryYep (with caveat that we share the same semantics for geographic zone in question). Linguistically too for anyone who has actually bothered to learn the important languages. Unlike Anthony or Mallory. To be fair, I respect Mallory.

Secondly, Balto-Slavic, Celtic and Germanic are not more closely related to each other than to some of the other late PIE branches. For instance, Balto-Slavic is considered far more closely related to Indo-Iranian than to Celtic, which is generally seen as a sister branch to Italic.

As per Kristiansen Germanic is derived from CWC language. So definitely it is related to Balto-Slavic, I can add that it is related even more than anyone suppose.

Also in Latin and Ancient Greek one may find some Slavic elements. Rather late ones. It wouldn't be possible if all that branches were not derived from CWC and its offshoots.

@ArzaOf course they are related. Hence the Indo-European language family.

The point is that the proximity between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian is much greater than Balto-Slavic and Germanic. Yet the proposed migration pattern above conveniently ignores this; gives no account of the language transformation, etc.

Moreover, Tocharian and Anatolian are some of the stickers of the Rubik's cube that want to be ignored in the above model.

I'll let you figure out the rest, but the hint is that what you are saying is right in the zone of what the vectors would have been.

I think something should be clarified. You make it sound as if all the branches of IE are equally independent or that they somehow shot straight from the steppe to their current positions, thousands of years later.

The things that spread with late PIE are not balto slavic, celtic, italic, indo iranian, greek, and so forth. At the time of the late PIE there was only a branch that would become tocharian, a branch that would become italic and celtic, and a branch that would become Baltic, Slavic, Indic, Iranian, Greek and so forth. There isnt good reason to think that last grouping headed straight for the baltic. At the time of the initial CW expansion, Balto-slavic was not yet separate from indo iranian. So during the early CW we need to also think about what works for the eventual indo iranian. If indo iranian lacked EEF, that can be an indicator...

This is also relevant because Rob thinks that the R1a in greece isnt from the original indo european greeks because it looks like the balto slavs. But it should be remebered that ancient greeks are expected to be more related to balto slavs than say a random late PIE person. I dont know much about greek r1a; how recent in origin is it?

Mutations can happen at any time, and in fact, happen all the time. Look at any language today. They don't all need to happen instantaneously or in sequential fashion at all times. For sure, some mutations are linear and genetic (linguistically). Others are sporadic. Others from proximity with a new language.

As an aside, see Anthony 1995, 557 for one of the biggest clues.

Back to Balto-Slavic and Germanic, whatever you might be referring to has nothing on the proximity (and grammatical proximity) between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian.

Help me understand, because I'm a little slow. And a little skeptical, since this post appears to be a case of "Have Theory, Need Data."

1. The R1a and R1b split was millennia ago. Well before any of the population movements that are the topic of this post.

Just so we're clear, you're positing that there was some mythical homeland, where R1b and R1a males/tribes lived right next to one another, for ages, epochs, millennia -- with no intermixing -- and then at some point, they said, "let's all go migrate en masse -- you go left, I'll head right?"

And then over the miles and miles on foot, and made modern Iberia like 80% R1b but modern Poland 60% R1b?

Seriously?

2. And then the R1b folks got to Iberia and managed to give the Basques the highest percentages of that in the world, but gave them few nuclear genes?

I mean, most people would interpret the paper on Iberia as coming to the OPPOSITE conclusion as you did in this post. Help me understand, because I see a very square peg trying to squeeze in a round hole.

My demographic modeling comes up with a vastly different conclusion than you do. I see several expansions, many with nothing to do with the initial Info European explosion.

Maybe R1a folks were part of the initial expansion. They went into India and the now slavic countries of Eastern Europe.

But from there, the expansion had nothing to do with the steppes or Indo Europeans or gender differentialized expansion.

I see a second expansion including entire tribes, especially women, to arrive at the nuclear/autosomal DNA statistics we have in the record.

Then I see a third expansion, of the Beaker types, that included males of a different type, expanding into and taking over Steppe-introgressed populations.

Let's not forget the archaeology. Expansions 1 and 2 could have easily been from the horse, higher calories, etc. Expansion 3 could have been from lactase persistence and metallurgy.

But there is no way to view this as one expansion, motivated by Steppe "superior" genes, and one advance in technology. There is too much time in between, and too much of a difference in the male chromosomes.

Hate to be so blunt, but this would be like saying that Redhaired Vikings went only to the UK, while BlondHaired Vikings went only to Russia. It's just not credible for a tribe to have sorted themselves in the demographic ways your theory necessarily implicates.

Re: y-dna and the Balkans and Rob and David's discussion, for the Balkans and y-dna, as Alberto originally noted (good spot!), the Early Bronze Age Balkan samples do not have much R1 on the whole.

This is pretty similar to all the Mid-Late Bronze Age Hungarian samples, who don't have any R1 so far, IRC (J2, I2, G).

So I wonder if we will see a different dynamic in SE Europe to East Central Europe, where the dominant Y lineages will not be the R1 associated with steppe lineages at all, until perhaps the Slavic expansions. May also have been true in Italy to an extent (or at least truer in Italy than it was in Iberia).

(Tentatively, that is, the "Kings of the Bronze Age", the elite clonal lineages with strong founder effects that become somewhat disassociated with their autosome, may have come from some of the more sophisticated Bronze Age cultures the SE abutted, rather than the steppe cultures who engaged in mass migration and reshaped the autosomal landscape.).

Needs more ancient dna! (hopefully there will be enough to begin answering the question).

So you think that the most likely place for the genesis of the Yamnaya population is the North Caucasus? Of course that makes sense, because this population would have formed in a contact zone between farmers and hunter-gatherers, ones being genetically CHG and the others EHG. The data we have from Ukraine mostly rules out Ukraine as an option: no EHG during the Neolithic, and the pre-Yamnaya sample is very different -at least on the PCA- from Yamnaya proper.

But how would this have happened? And how would the Maykop culture fit into this? Because at the time of that Ukraine_Eneolithic sample, the North Caucasus was occupied by the Maykop culture.

@Folker

No idea how the Ukraine_Eneolithic sample could fit into Yamnaya. It might work together with EHG and CHG to correct that shift to the west that's needed. But we'll have to see when the samples are available.

@Rob

Yes, it puzzles me how that Lavian_LN sample could be there if it didn't come from Ukraine already mixed. Who knows, that Ukraine_Eneolithic is just one sample, so maybe we'll find some other population that does look like local (SHG-like) HG + CHG. As usual, more samples needed!

mooreisbetter said...Maybe R1a folks were part of the initial expansion. They went into India and the now slavic countries of Eastern Europe.But from there, the expansion had nothing to do with the steppes or Indo Europeans or gender differentialized expansion.I see a second expansion including entire tribes, especially women, to arrive at the nuclear/autosomal DNA statistics we have in the record.Then I see a third expansion, of the Beaker types, that included males of a different type, expanding into and taking over Steppe-introgressed populations.

1. The R1a and R1b split was millennia ago. Well before any of the population movements that are the topic of this post.

The Pontic-Caspian Steppe was home to ancient populations with either R1a or R1b, and both R1a and R1b.

So it's the obvious homeland for steppe-like populations closely related to each other that carried either R1a or R1b.

What does it matter when R1a and R1b split? How is this relevant to what I just said?

Just so we're clear, you're positing that there was some mythical homeland, where R1b and R1a males/tribes lived right next to one another, for ages, epochs, millennia - with no intermixing - and then at some point, they said, "let's all go migrate en masse - you go left, I'll head right?

They did mix on the steppe, that's why they were so similar to each other after they left the steppe.

But the reason some of them carried only R1a and others only R1b is because, as per my blog post, of local founder effects on the steppe due to patrilocality.

I'm not making this up. It's in the ancient data: Samara Khvalynsk has both R1a and R1b, but Samara and Kalmykia Yamnaya has only R1b.

You're really not very good at this. Have you thought about a different hobby?

Please note that Yamnaya-like people existed just before Yamnaya. So when you claim that so and so mixed to create Yamnaya, they didn't, they mixed to create populations living on the steppe before Yamnaya. See here.

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/the-khvalynsk-men-2_16.html

And when philosophizing about population structure on the Pontic-Caspian Steppe from the Eneolithic onwards, please do note the extraordinary mobility of the people living there at the time.

So yes, the pre-Yamnaya mixture that gave rise to Yamnaya-like populations could have happened in the North Caucasus. But it's also possible that people moved from the North Caucasus as far as the Urals and Central Ukraine, and mixed there.

In the next 20 years they will finally understand that PIE wheeled vehicle terminology comes from Slavic and wheel comes from Slavic “kulko”> “kuklo” (it has etymology in Slavic, but doesn’t have etymology in PIE)

What David said is true. Kostenki14 is 36,000 yo and MA1 is 24,000 and they clearly were an Yamnaya-like people who mixed with a Siberian population (with Amerindian genes even).Such Yamnaya-like population must be true because, although the Yamnaya still had those "outside" genes from Kostenki14 and MA1, it is very much diluted in a sea of EHG and CHG, which means that a "untainted" population existed to dilute "outside" genes.This movement is not "weird" at all, as East Scythians did the same thing - contact between Altaic and Steppe populations happened a lot.MA1 in fact is the primordial "R" yDNA.

Yeah, I wasn't claiming it had to happen hard up against the Caucasus, or all in one stage. Just (as Alberto said) probably east of the Dnieper, because the Yamnaya EHG is at the east end of the cline with minimal WHG, and more likely to the south because they have high CHG.

@Alberto

There were North Caucasus people out there before Maykop, and CHG admix too (unless the dates are way out?), so Maykop wasn't necessarily a major genetic contributor. Or maybe it was, who knows. How did some particular tribe come to be so crazy successful, no idea, maybe Anthony is right about the wagon pastoralism package.

Especially interesting would be checking for IBD between the Steppic and post-Steppic populations of SE Europe, since the model for sociocultural interaction there seems so different from that in N and W Europe.

@Richard Holtman>>So every non R Haplogroup is non white? That leaves a lot of white people with non white status.<<No one said that, there's a lot of Caucasian yDNA (using the term "white" is stupid). What's being said is that "R" appeared in the Steppes-to-Altai range in a Yamnaya-like mixed population. Whose population that "R" belonged to, is not known, so MA1 became the "primordial". He had EHG, CHG, Onge, Papuan, Amerindian, Siberian and God-knows-what else, and the "R" could have belonged primordially to any of those individual populations.The questions about R1a and R1b are totally different also.

>>This agenda that R is the only white Haplogroup is ridiculous.<<There's no such agenda and you're delusional. But I'm not surprised either by your lack of reading comprehension, this comment section is just like a sanatorium of mindless people.

Abstract: More than 1.3 billion people who live in Indian subcontinent correspond to several large ethnic groups who are highly diverse and complex. Importantly, India’s genetic past remains a subject a great debate due to numerous hypotheses surrounding population origins and migrations within and from outside India. In order to reconstruct and explain the patterns of genetic diversity evident in modern humans, an understanding of both past and present population dynamics is crucial. Several studies have shown that genetic data from ancient individuals are indispensable when reconstructing past population histories. We for the first time use the ancient genomics approach in South Asia to reconstruct the complex human population history of Indian Sub continent. We are exploring the recent technological advancement to directly test these hypotheses using ancient and modern human DNA in India. We have collected several ancient skeletal remains from different time scale of human civilization ranging from early Mesolithic, Neolithic, Harappan (Indus Valley civilization) and Megalithic culture. With the whole/partial genome NGS data, we are reconstructing the prehistoric peopling and migration of modern human in the Indian subcontinent. We are also testing the pervasive founder events and gradient of recessive genes accumulation by comparing the ancient genome with the modern human population of India.

"I'm a little slow. And a little skeptical, since this post appears to be a case of "Have Theory, Need Data.""

The entire history of the "Steppe-theory" have been a continous search or "more data".

So has GW Childes hypothesis about Anatolia as the origin of farming, which Maja Gimbutas used as base for her "Out-of-the-Steppes" to explain the I-E origins - and consequent distribution. Which people like Victor Mair and Anthony West and Jarred Diamond bought - hook,line and sinker - to create the entertaining dramative of PIE as a "steppe-phenomenon" - creating 'higher culture' being more 'advanced' - in terms of weaponry and brute agression.

Mallory always had a more cautious and humble approach, though - that he kept expressing far into pension-age. In fact, the only major issue he was conclusive about was that the PIE did NOT come out of Anatolia. Or Iran, India or China. Which is why he was willing to keep searching in the geographical area between Bactria and the Baltic.

Todays data-base of aDNA serves terminal challenges to these models.

First it blasts the hypothesis of Anatolia as the origin from which agricultue spread.

Secondly it dismisses Majas Kurgan-thesis, once and for all.

Thirdly, it explains that there have been no demographical turnovers or events of replacemet within Europe - from the late-glacial bottlenecks to the Roman invasion.

A final problem with the idea of a LNE/BA-migration of PIE/IE to Europe is the lack of language appearing before LNE - presuming that both the early farmers as well as the hunter-gatheres had some kind of a language. Considering that these populations had larger brains than the present Europeans it's a bit of a stretch to assume that Euroeps first farmers lived in a mute silence.

As the latest treasorous amounts of data arrived it's clear that we're in need of two new theories:

1. The origins of agricultural populations2. The origin of I-E language and symbolism.

The continous work Davidski is doing should make him well fit to look seriously into alternative models and time-lines. Starting off with his excellent discovery concerning the bi-furication of the R1-genome, he would be half-way through - already. The remaining input needed to complete a new model - from the archaeological and linguistic dimensions - would certainly be adressed by the professional part of his regular commenters...

Three of four of the Bronze age Balkan genomes from ~3000 BC don't appear to have much if any Steppe admixture. But the one which was buried in a tumlus mound, I2165, had significant Steppe-like admixture. He came from a different archaeological site. than the other Balkan bronze age genomes.

Also he carries the same Y DNA haplogroup as the YamnayaBulgaria male: I2a2a1b1b.

Yepp. He managed to keep a balanced view of both his own as well as others results, noting the problems still remaining before any cler conclusions about the "PIE" origin could be detrmined.

"The point is that the proximity between Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian is much greater than Balto-Slavic and Germanic."

First off there's a clear germanic substrate in slavic. One plain example connected to goat- and cattle-farming:

In the danish-germanic area of NW Europe milk (lacto) is starting with an open vocal (i)– as in 'milk/melech/melch/melk. In slavic Europe we find the same, open [i] disclosing a clear-cut cognate between east and west: mleko/mlieko/mlijeko/mlyako. This entire zone is basically dominated by the lowlanders connected to R1b – east to the Yamna horizon.

In the northern climate-zone we find a closed base-vocal [o} – from Frislands «molke» to "mjòlk/mjoelk/mjolk" in Scandinavia and coastal Finland. In Russia and Belo-Russia the same [o] appears as "molok/moloko/malako" Both sides of the northern waters dominated by R1a.

Thus we see that the northern farmers share linguistical AND genetical charactheristics, along a northern west-east-axis – following the WATERWAYS. While the same, clear-cut relationship appears in the southern climate-zone. Which means that the southern and the northern farmers, respectively, have had close, ancient relationships according to climate and geography – spread the lactase persistance and I-E proto-language across Eurasia.

Do you guys believe the R listed in the Dereivka samples could possibly be R2 ? I find it hard to believe that there weren't any R2 in the Yamnaya samples. There is a correlation between R1a and R2 frequencies being highly concentrated in the certain Indo European groups in South Asia. The Yamnaya culture seems to have been present in a large geographical area and I am not sure if there were any regional differences between the population itself. Eastern Yamnaya/Afnasievo Yamnaya (R1a, R2) vs Western Yamnaya (R1a, R1b). This would make sense as to why the south asian populations who have a higher R1a percentages also have a higher R2 presence as well.

Do you guys believe the R listed in the Dereivka samples could possibly be R2?

More likely a sister branch of some sort.

R2 looks like an ancient South Caspian/South Central Asian diagnostic marker to me, and Yamnaya + close relatives don't appear to have that type of ancestry, because there are no South Caspian-specific markers on the Bronze Age Steppe.

And if R2 was important in some way in Indo-European dispersals, then we would see at least one or two instances of it in Yamnaya, Poltavka, Srubnaya, Andronovo, Sintashta etc. But it's just not there.

The steppe that moved to Armenia S Caucasus at MBA didn't move into Anatolia. It didn't even enter West Armenia. Only later Trialeti expanded little bit toward Erzrum. But was probably stopped by Hittites.

Btw skulls in Armenia during this period were Mesocephalic while in Anatolia same period they were already heavily Brachycephalic.

Actually there is no proof of an Indo-European presence in Anatolia before the 2nd Millenium BC. Most earlier dates are based on assumptions made primarily by linguists. Where and when nobody knows at the moment and contrary to other regions there is no cultural continuity proven - like in Northern and Eastern Europe.

Also, Vucedol seems to be a realistic candidate for the successful Beaker expansion right now. As for Greeks, is there already a possibility to discern Vucedol from more Eastern groups as possible Proto-Greek source? Because Proto-Italo-Celtic could be linked to Vucedol as of now.

@Davidski: What do you think about the idea of a branch of E-V13 being part of the later Indo-European expansion in South Eastern Europe as some sort of early "convert"?

The idea of Hittites coming in as some sort of minority, most likely as mercenaries, via the Black Sea or the Caucasus is quite old actually. As for the other Anatolians, what kind of dates and archaeological cultures do we have for a save diagnosis of an Indo-European presence in Anatolia? For sure nothing before the 3rd, but rather 2nd mill. BC.

All Bulgarians dating 6000-4500 BC are basically 100% AnatoliaNeolithic. The only true exception is the Malak_Preslavets site where the individuals have signifcant HG admixture, maybe 30%.

In Bulgaria HG ancestry raises in the 5th millennium BC like in Western Europe but not as much. Several Chalcolithic Bulgarian individuals dating around 4600 BC are still basically pure AnatoliaNeo. Also, interestingly two Bulgarian outliers dating to the same period have a huge amount of EHG or Yamnaya-like ancestry: I2181, ANI163.

Early Bronze age Bulgaria. 3400-2800BC. -----------------

This is when the first significant change in Bulgaria occurs. HG ancestry raises, most individuals start to score in the CHG/IranN components, and for the first time unquestionable Steppe ancestry appears.

Most EBA Bulgarians score maybe half as much in the CHG/IranN component as Yamnaya but hardly any in the EHG component. This indicates the CHGstuf which arrived in Anatolia also made its way to Bulgaria. Only one EBA Bulgarian; I2165, has significant Steppe admixture. He was buried under a tumulus.

Iron age Bulgaira, 500 BC.

No Bulgarians dating between 2800 BC and 500 BC were sampled. The single Iron age indvidual is S5769.E1.L1. She has very little if any Steppe admixture. She also appears to have no or very little HG admixture. She seems to be mostly AnatoliaNeo with some CHGstuff and some Steppe stuff. So maybe like modern SouthEastern Europeans minus significant Slavic admixture.

Bronze age Croatia, 1500-1700 BC.

In all three sites the genomes are similar and are for the most part AnatoliaNeo+Steppe. They have significant Steppe admixture, maybe as much as modern Croatians. They lack any signs of WHG or extra CHG.

The Early Bronze age guy who was buried in a tumlus confirms there was a Steppe presence in Bulgaria-Balkans by 2900 BC. Furthermore, a later individual who was buried in a tumlus and dats to 1700 BC carried R1a Z93 and was basically identical to Srubnaya.

In around 3000-2000 BC Steppe folk migrated into the Balkans like as did into Northern Europe. Maybe they didn't replace most of the native populations but they were there.

->"Contrary to earlier views, there has now developed a consensus among linguists that entry of Indo-European speakers into Asia Minor was much earlier than previously assumed. See Melchert (2003a: 23-6) with references to Carruba (1995), Oettinger (2002a) and others, and also Lehrman (2001: 116-7) and Yakubovich (2010: 6-7). The gist of the argument is that the attested degree of differentiation of the IE Anatolian languages such as Hittite and Luvian already by the beginning of the second millennium requires at a minimum that their divergence from Proto-Anatolian began by the middle of the third millennium. It may easily have begun as early as the end of the fourth."(The Position of Anatolian; Berkeley)"

Yes, this might mean that Indo-Hittie / PIE isn;t originally from the steppe. Let's all get over it. At least we can be happy R1 & I2 expanded from Europe.

@Rob: You confuse lingustic speculation with hard facts. Any idea of an Anatolian or further East origin of Anatolian Indo-Europeans need to be brought in line with the steppe hypothesis, which is now proven for LPIE. I don't care about PIE being from Europe or not and to me a more Eastern origin is still plausible, but rather from Central Asia than Anatolia-Near East and of course South Asia is out of question.

Sporadic samples from Anatolia from unspecified cultures, times and social classes around the 3rd mill. BC prove nothing, nothing at all. And the linguistic speculation, even if true, doesn't tell you anything about where this split has taken place. In Anatolia or not? Even if Anatolia, in which corner of the country, which culture and social class?

Do you have answers for those questions? I think nobody has and later, proven Indo-European upper classes from Anatolia need to be tested. Anything else is not strong enough, not strong enough for refutation of the steppe theory for sure.

I was asking this because while most people seem to give for granted the Yamnaya population (that it was just there in the steppe and no explanation is needed), for me this continues to be quite a mystery. We have a good genetic hypothesis based on UP/Mesolithic samples from Georgia and EHG from Samara and Karelia. But we lack a realistic scenario about the genesis of this population.

Ukraine was the best option for me, because there is ample evidence of Mesolithic (or Neolithic in the "with pottery" sense) activity, and documented interactions with farming communities from the west, while still having a good connection to the Caucasus. But if it turns out that Sredny Stog and later were genetically mostly SHG+EEF, and that Yamnaya people arrived around 3000 there replacing the previous populations, then that's a big problem.

The North Caucasus is another option. Indeed there is evidence of farming there in the 5th mill. Rather scarce, but it's there. I'm not so sure about any abundant activity of the "Neolithic" hunter-gatherers (someone correct me if I'm wrong about this), who had pottery and are therefor easier to track. I don't know if there are any documented interactions either (while in Ukraine that's well documented too).

So I'm still waiting to see when, where and how the Yamnaya population emerged. Or at least to see a good hypothesis about it. For now it's more like "we don't know how it happened, but it happened".

We'll see how Maykop turns out, or if any other samples from around 4000-3500 BC point us in the right direction.

Vucedol is not Proto Celto Italic. Vucedol is hypothetised to be proto Illyrian. We have R1b Z2103 from there also J2b2a from Croatia EBA. This two Y dna-s s are quite frequent among Albanians who are considered to be an offshoot of Illyrians.Albeit I think they had also some Daco Thracian influence later.

I will add that Italic could be influenced by Vucedol and other Balkanic sites. But proto Italic off course came with L51.

@all

Concerning LPIE in Steppe. Yes evidence is quite solid especially after we got the hard proof that R1b L51 moved from there ( Gioiello please don't convince me otherwise. I will change my mind only when I see older R1b M269 from Italy ; ).

Armenian case is easily solvable in that model. In fact it can be considered solved.

But the Greek case can be puzzling. So let's see what will say the upcoming paper of Lazaridis.

@ Zardos “I don't care about PIE being from Europe or not and to me a more Eastern origin is still plausible, but rather from Central Asia than Anatolia-Near East and of course South Asia is out of question.”

It looks like you are shopping in the ancient DNA store and you put in your shopping cart your favourite products. :)

I agree that non-Anatolian PIE from the steppe is basically over and done with. It's fun to consider non-steppe Indo-Hittite scenaria - though they seem less likely too, to me - and we can hope for any coming DNA clearing things up.

In a more specific area, that's perhaps somewhat more illuminated due to earlier attestation, I'm still open to the possibility of a Greek entry either via the Balkans or Anatolia personally. And to all sorts of ideas about the Myceneans - earlier entry of proto-Greek and long indigenous development, sudden entry at the period of the Shaft Graves, even the fringe but respectable theory of the Mycenaeans having Indo-Iranian links and Greek having entered earlier (but let's say one finds Z93 in Mycenae - does this point us to "they were Indo-Iranian-related after all" or to "proto-Greek or certain branches of Greek were associated with Z93"? clearly you need other considerations to answer that). Not to mention the theories of various possible IE and non-IE strata...

I'm more pessimistic about DNA answering those more specific things conclusively, unfortunately, but at least the basic form of a general steppe theory (though steppe and, especially later, European interactions still remain to be elucidated) has been shown I think for pretty much every branch.

It is you who is confused. The comments I highlighted relate to the demands of linguistics and attestations of history, I did not even mention the DNA evidence in this study, which leave room to one's interpretation.

So, LINGUISTICS dictates that the Anatolian languages began to diverge c. 4000 BC, and the physical reality of attested & widespread IE presence in Anatolia already by the second millenium means they could not have arrived after 2000 BC, as you plea.

So, sorry, your contentions are nonsense. The only people who arrived after 2000 BC were non-IE Assyrians

You also state "Also, Vucedol seems to be a realistic candidate for the successful Beaker expansion right now."

Well that just shows what you know , which isn't much. Vucedol was haplogroup G and Z2013, and the main BB was all L51; and BB can't autosomal derive from Vicedol. And that's leaving the fact that BB has nothing materially to do with Vucedol apart from some late convergence in ceramics styles.

@ ArzaWhat does a random, miscontextualised quote meant to mean ? We have HARD data of numerous IE languages attested in Anatolia by M2. They are divergent; distinct languages. Think about French and Italian, how different they are in ~ 1500 years . The Anatolian language were even more distinct.

@ AlLinguistics can't come up with definitive absolute chronology but the relative chronology of splits is unanimously agreed for Indo-Hittie. Of course, snowflakes throwing a hissyfit can claim otherwise, but until they publish their data no one cares

@ AlogoYes I agree they're very interesting questions, we might be able to glean enough evidence

I suspect that after PIE split somewhere south of the Caucasus; the main trunk went north and another went due west through Anatolia and perhaps even reached Greece But then I think the main trunk also reached Greece via the Balkans; culminating in Proto-Greek/ Mycenaean

@ Aram"Vucedol is not Proto Celto Italic. Vucedol is hypothetised to be proto Illyrian. We have R1b Z2103 from there also J2b2a from Croatia EBA. This two Y dna-s s are quite frequent among Albanians who are considered to be an offshoot of Illyrians.Albeit I think they had also some Daco Thracian influence later".

Aram, read all what I wrote about the R-L23-CTS9219 , "Balkan cluster" (name is mine), in the Balkans, which has nothing to do with the upstrean R-Z2105 of Vucedol, coming it from western Europe and Italy and it is recent (not more than 2600 years ago), if you don't want in continuing to say nonsense.

If you were referring to me, I have always thought and said that from Yamnaya expanded the satem languages, and not the centum ones, even though some linguists are denying that division, and also German Dziebel wrote a lot, but I have to study it yet.

@Arza“http://langevo.blogspot.com/2013/05/mind-asterisk.htmlThus, protolanguage reconstructions are not “data”. They are forever provisional and hypothetical. Using them as data is a category error.”

The problem with those artificial, reconstructed (in my opinion fake) languages like PIE is that they don’t explain anything. They cannot give better etymology of the most important words than Slavic languages:

Languages are normally very stable. They start to change, when people mix.The rate of change depends on many things. Linguistics should be corrected by genetics. If genetics tells us that Hittites were very mixed people, then naturally their language, like their culture, religion etc, was very hybridized and nobody can claim that it was very old.

For PIE problem it is irrelevant and people should stop wasting time on this kind of speculations.

If you disagree show me Hittite etymologies of for example kinship terms and prove that they are better, more parsimonious, than Slavic etymologies.

@ EastPole & ArzaI don't have to show you anything You two have your own little fringe perspectives on language dating and splits, coming up with absurd theories like Proto-Slavic dates to 3000 BC. The burden of proof lies on you to disprove the overwhelming consensus of published linguists.

2. However, some eastern mtDNA haplotypes have not been found in Corded Ware but seem to have taken a more southern route to Central EuropeYamnaya Samara Lopatino II W3a1a, Balkans EMBA Croatia I4332 W3a1, BB Germany-BAV Künzing-Bruck I3607 W3a1,

Is there any reason why WHG or EHG could roam in almost whole Europe, but CHG were limited to Caucasus? They were chained to the rock?

Well, but that's the kind of answer I was referring to, that I've seen for the last couple of years. That's why I was asking for some specifics (when, where, how,... based on sound reasoning and if possible some evidence of some sort).

The Caucasus, the open steppe and the forest steppe are different eco-zones. And it's not clear if you're suggesting that CHG roamed the open steppe when they were still hunter-gatherers, and they exchanged wives with the EHGs from the forest steppe. And if so, where are those mostly CHG groups in the steppe? Any hint about them?

The evidence we have rather suggests that the admixture happened (if it happened in the steppe or near) by the time when CHG had adopted farming. So again, where are those farming communities in the open steppe, close enough to the forest steppe to interact with the EHGs?

Etc, etc...

I know it's not easy to give answers. That's exactly my point. It's a difficult question, but many people seems happy to say: "Somehow it happened, who cares how, when or where?". But I'm personally interested in knowing those answers, because I think they are important.

Eastern Europe Steppe twins. Every time one is found, they other is not to far [behind]away! When one has a copper burial; so does the other.One gets basic pottery, the other fancy pottery. When one has a special Kurgan burial with all the bells and whistles; so does the other.When one has a wagon, the other gets a chariot! One has a horse; so does the other; except with bits and saddle,. ..etc

@Rob"Also, there is no proof of IE in Western Europe until 800 BC . Does that mean IEs arrived there in 801BC ?"

There is a basic difference there: Western Europe was still in Prehistory 800 BC, not Anatolia, for wich we have thousands of records (cuneiform tablets) since the late IId millenium BC.

So, it is extremely clear that IE speakers are only attested AFTER 2000 BC.

Sure, it doesn't mean that IE peoples were not present in Anatolia. But it means that large parts of Anatolia were occupied by non IE, with continuity from before 2000 BC.

"So, LINGUISTICS dictates that the Anatolian languages began to diverge c. 4000 BC, and the physical reality of attested & widespread IE presence in Anatolia already by the second millenium means they could not have arrived after 2000 BC, as you plea."

No, SOME linguists HYPOTHIZED an early divergence with early entry in Anatolia. It's purely hypothetical, because it was the simpliest explanation. If divergence needs some time, it doesn't mean that this divergence occured c. 4000 BC, it could be later. Divergence could have occured more rapidly because of distance or acculturation of some sort. And differenciation could have happened in another place than Anatolia (not very likely, but possible).

A migration of some IE groups in the second half of the IId millenium, in some parts of Anatolia, is also a possibility.

In any case, around 2000 BC, IE languages were not widespread in Anatolia, they were limited to some parts of it.

In fact, what is clear now from the last studies, is that IE didn't migrate in Anatolia 4000 BC. This hypothesis is dead.

Given that you are not accepting basic facts (as Hattian were non IE), your posts look like special pleading, with little value.

@AlogoLinguistic theories are changing.Here is the most recent language tree, given few days ago at the presentation where A. Garrett was also speaking:

http://s22.postimg.org/ayiu8c9gx/tree.png

We need dates and genetic markers to verify this tree.

There is also a problem with the definition of PIE. What is PIE?In my opinion Proto-Indo-European should by definition denote language, culture, religion, which was the source of languages, cultures and religions to Europe and India. That which is common to India and Europe is PIE.That culture which split into one part going to India and the other expanding in Europe should be denoted PIE. All those languages, cultures and religions which are related to so defined PIE, but are not PIE, should be called differently. Then the confusion will stop.

Vucedol would be a good candidate for Proto-Italo-Celtic if its ancestral to the successful Bell Beakers and so far its the most likely candidate. I know its distribution resembles later Illyrians, which position in the IE-tree is under debate, but Corded Ware is unlikely to have been the ancestral BBC element. So far I see no better candidate, even though I'm open minded of course. BBC is in its Western and Central European extension now pretty sure as the Proto-Italo-Celtic element.

@Kristiina: As for going shopping, Eastern Europe and Central Asia was a continuum, so unless you have the exact place for the genesis of the PPIE population element, you can't say for sure whether its still in the limits of Europe or not, and in fact it doesnt matter too much, because we're talking about closely related, very similar populations from the Northern Pontic area to the East and Central Asia - presumably.

@Rob: IE in Anatolia before 2000 BC are likely indeed, but where exactly and to which extend is not for sure. First, Anatolia and the surrounding areas were for a long time non-IE to a large but varying degree, both before and after 2000 BC. And while simple elite dominance by a small minority is out of question for most of the CWC and BBC, it is not for other parts of the IE-world, especially not the Balkans and Anatolia, where there was a completely different situation. Civilization and population density wasn't the same as in Britain for example.

We have the non-IE people in Anatolia and just because they lived in a kingdom ruled by IE-speaking people, they don't have to be heavily admixed. You need to test the early, proven IE elite, everything else is not worth talking about.

So if they would test a larger sample of Mycenaean and later Greek elite graves and those would be not heavily steppe admixed, that would be huge. Same goes for the Anatolian IE. To give an example, even in the Hittite army a large portion to majority was non-Hittite, not even assimilated. The earlier Hattian people were non-IE and an earlier Hittite presense, before 2000 BC, is not proven.

Hattian was most likely a Caucasian language and the Eastern shift in Anatolia seem to have been related to Caucasian speaking people expanding into Neolithic Anatolia. This would correspond perfectly to what we see in the record, because earlier Anatolians for sure spoke no Caucasian tongue. This could also explain an increase of J haplogroup wise.

The Indo-European expansion on the other hand happened later, after that Caucasian one. The new results we got so far add nothing witch wouldn't be compatible that chain of events.

Rob: "Genetics tells us there was a marked population shift in Anatolia between Neolithic and Bronze Age! This also fits the picture of linguistics, palaeclimatology and archaeology."

Agreed on that, an unsurprising overall shift for the general region, even if we find some early steppe ancestry, based on what I've read too (not necessarily in an IE-Anatolian context of course lol). I'm curious about whether a similar shift will be visible in the Aegean/eastern Greece around that time as well since there are some indications, irrespective of specifically IE-Anatolian associations.

Folker:"A migration of some IE groups in the second half of the IId millenium, in some parts of Anatolia, is also a possibility."

I'd say a certainty. Greek presence to some degree since the 15th century; Phrygian seems very connected to Greek and arrives in Anatolia at some point after 1200 BC; the apparent migration of Thracians. Unless you were referring to specifically Anatolian intra-migration in which case, ignore.

Also, why do you think that some IE couldn't have arrived in Anatolia at some point in the second half of the 4th millennium? Even with the limited current samples and with low steppe ancestry both in Anatolia and the CA Balkans - there's no need to expect massive amounts in every case as we've agreed before, right? Especially as those guys seem kinda insignificant until much later on. You could argue that it's less likely but there's no need to throw these sub-topics out of the window even if we agree on a general steppe homeland. There are interesting potential connections that remain unresolved.

Genetics tells us there was a marked population shift in Anatolia between Neolithic and Bronze Age! Did you bother to read the study ?

This also fits the picture of linguistics , palaeclimatology and archaeology. Game over "

Yes, game over. It is perfectly clear that the samples have nothing to do with the Hittites. And given that the only attested BA cultures in Anatolia were non-IE, what's the conclusion? That IE has nothing to do with this introgression? Logical, no? But you'll answer that Hattians were IE, and so on. The same bullshit.

@Zardos"Hattian was most likely a Caucasian language and the Eastern shift in Anatolia seem to have been related to Caucasian speaking people expanding into Neolithic Anatolia. This would correspond perfectly to what we see in the record, because earlier Anatolians for sure spoke no Caucasian tongue. This could also explain an increase of J haplogroup wise. "

Completely agree. It is even obvious in archeology ands genetics.

"The Indo-European expansion on the other hand happened later, after that Caucasian one. The new results we got so far add nothing witch wouldn't be compatible that chain of events"

Agree again.

It doesn't solve the question of linguistic diverge, but it is the the most parsimonious possibility in relation to archeology, records and genetics.

The problem here, is that actual studies are focussing to prove or disprove an IE expansion far earlier, and say very little of what happened in the IId millenium BC. All samples tested predates 2000BC, except Barcin, but this one precedes the Hittites settlement by 200 years.

Zardos: "So if they would test a larger sample of Mycenaean and later Greek elite graves and those would be not heavily steppe admixed, that would be huge."

I don't completely agree that it'd be huge. Complete lack of steppe ancestry (and associations with Anatolia) would be massively interesting but even low levels of steppe would be fine. It isn't necessary that Greek appears with the Shaft Graves, that might be the result of overall local development, but could have been around for a good while before that, after all.

Your bringing up the potential connections of Hattic to Caucasian and the CHG-like shift is interesting since the pre-Greek substrate has, too, been claimed to have Caucasian associations. A lack or presence in the Aegean at that period might modify our attitudes towards that possibility.

This is a very linguistic-y discussion, so I really have not so much to say here, but would say:

Davidski: Secondly, Balto-Slavic, Celtic and Germanic are not more closely related to each other than to some of the other late PIE branches. For instance, Balto-Slavic is considered far more closely related to Indo-Iranian than to Celtic, which is generally seen as a sister branch to Italic. Therefore, if Balto-Slavic and Celtic derive from a homeland on the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, then logically this is also where we should look for the origins of Indo-Iranian and Italic.

Only thing I would comment on that is that linguistics is not totally that consistent on the tree phylogeny of IE. E.g. the most recent tree Garrett himself presented was - http://cdn.sci-news.com/images/enlarge/image_2516_2e-Indo-European-Languages.jpg. There is a subbranch there which covers Balto-Slavic to Celtic.

There are differences in method here. From what I know lexicostatistic models like used by Grey-Atkinson-Chang-Garrett do rely very heavily on sound changes and morphology word formation rule) changes over time. Much more weakly on the number of cognates, and subjective criteria about the sort of cognates there are.

Chang-Garrett's version became compatible with a steppe origin for IE in time, by improving on Grey-Atkinson's back projection problem and implied Neolithic timeframe by accounting for homoplasy, but all sets of the mainstream lexicostatistic models have the cladistic feature I mention (a specific European subbranch). Correct me if I'm wrong anyone?

So there's an immediate difference from the classical linguistic Swadesh list derived approaches that IRC rely much more heavily on cognate counts, even methods which restrict cognates to core vocabulary.

This may be the most immediate difference between the lexicostatic models that place Eastern Indo-European languages (from Greek to Indo-Aryan) outside a European subclade.

It does actually seem like there is an increase in number of cognate sharing between Baltic-Slavic and Indo-Aryan. See - http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/11/23/rspb.2010.1917, Figure 2 for an easy quantitative comparison.

But does this reflect a genetic (ancestral) and phlyogenetic relationship, or are the changes in morphology and sound shifts a much better signal? It may be possible to argue both ways, with no clear outcome (e.g. sprachbund features could argue against sound changes as a neutral feature; sharing of new / high status concept words argue against n of cognates, etc.). So a linguistic impasse is where I see it as at.

By the way, on the topic of lexicostatistics, this seems to have cheekily popped out without coming to my attention towards the end of last year, adding a hybridsation modification to the Garrett-Chang / Grey-Atkinson model - https://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-016-0745-6. Lexicostatistic trees with treemix style admixture features. Adds a few differences, though predictably linguistic hybridisation seems infrequent (at least between IE languages). Provocatively it models English as admixed between a Latin (proto-French) and Germanic (proto Frisian) language, in about 25:75 proportions.

When the Remedello sample came out, no mention of them from the single proponent of the now debunked Italian Refugium. The equally disqualifying information from the Italian Bell Beaker sample was also conveniently not talked about. From the paper:

"Population discontinuity in northern Italy:Our Beaker Complex individual from Parma is slightly shifted towards populations withsteppe ancestry in the PCA (Fig 1b). We tested for symmetry between BB_Italy_Parand Remedello_CA3 (Table S2), a culture preceding the Beaker Complex in northernItaly. Several steppe-like populations such as EHG (Z=4.6) or Yamnaya_Samara(Z=3.9) share more alleles with BB_Italy_Par than with Remedello_CA, indicating thatour Italian Beaker Complex individual harbors a steppe-related ancestry component notpresent in the previous Remedello culture."

We have collected several ancient skeletal remains from different time scale of human civilization ranging from early Mesolithic, Neolithic, Harappan (Indus Valley civilization) and Megalithic culture. With the whole/partial genome NGS data, we are reconstructing the prehistoric peopling and migration of modern human in the Indian subcontinent.

'It is perfectly clear that the samples have nothing to do with the Hittites'

Sorry to break it to you, but the Hitties weren't the only IEs in Anatolia. A couple of these individuals were from SW Anatolia - historic territory of Luwians. Now, can you cite me which non-IE people lived here ?

"But you'll answer that Hattians were IE"

When did I say the Hattians were IE ? PLease post the link. What seems to be ruffling your delicate feathers is that you seem incapable of complex thought, which corresponds to the fact that the Hittite realm was often referred to as 'the Land of the Hatti', just like the Gothic realm was often called Scythia. But really, don't fuse your brain cells on trying to understand that.

"We have the non-IE people in Anatolia and just because they lived in a kingdom ruled by IE-speaking people, they don't have to be heavily admixed. You need to test the early, proven IE elite, everything else is not worth talking about. "

No doubt, there were non-IE people in Anatolia. The native, pre-IE were probably the remaining, ANF -heavy people, off to the peripheries of Anatolia - like the Kaskians in the remoteness of the mountainous north.

The IEs expanded across the central plains. Different ecotones and different cultures, but they clashed and fused in in places like like Kanesh & Arslantepe with Hatti.

The whole "Elite conquest" arguement at this moment that seems like an assumption, verging on special pleading, unless you're going to argue that this happened via women.

The IE Anatolians can't have just been an elite stratum when they were everywhere in Anatolia. Quite simply, they were part and parcel of the landscape for 1000 years at least before their first attestation.

Certainly, we have evidence for intrusions coming from a pastoral , metallurgical population coming c. 3000 BC, with some links to the greater Pontic sphere, but mediated with the K-A koinon. There is nothing after, apart from Assyrian colonists, and a steppe intrusion limited to parts of Armenia, as Aram pointed out.

(Of course, unless you wish to suggest that the IE Anatolians were ethereal beings who ruled extracorporeally. :))

In fact, the entire idea of IE were a minority is - just as you said - an old (outdated) assumption

>>But alongside this, we must set the lack of any ‘perceptible trace ofHattic precedents underlying the historical, administrative, legal ordiplomatic literature of the kingdom’, and most recently it has beenclaimed that ‘the supposed impact of Hattic on Hittite language andinstitutions has been consistently overestimated’. Even the royal titlesLabarna (variant Tabarna) and Tawananna, long thought to be Hatticin origin, have recently been claimed to be Indo-European (see Ch. 4, n.16). There is also the indisputable fact that the Indo-European Nesitelanguage was the official written language of the royal court. It was usedin a wide variety of documents, both religious and secular, it was themedium of communication between Hittite kings and their regional governors and other officials, and between the kings and their vassalrulers in Anatolia, particularly in the west and south-west where Luwianwas widely spoken. << - Bryce

And

>>Klinger (1996 16f with n. 41, 93, 140, 198 with n. 287) argueseloquently against claims that early Hittite texts attest 'confrontation'between Indo-European newcomers and Hattians and more generallyagainst the popular model of imposition of an Indo-European upperor ruling class on a native Hattic population (for independent argumentsagainst such a conception see Steiner 1981 166f and cf. alsoBryce 1998 15). What evidence we have points rather to a long-termassimilation (Oettinger 2002 51). The linguistic facts cited aboveargue not for Hattic as an exclusive 'substrate' of Hittite, but ratherfor 'adstrate' effects on Hittite from both Hattic and Luwian. We arethus led to a scenario by which the speakers of the prehistoric dialectthat became Hittite were located not in north central Anatolia, but inan area between the Hattians to the north and the pre-Luwian populationto the south and west. This means roughly in a band of territorystretching from the southwest to the northeast along the upper courseof the Halys, centering on Nesa/Kanesh.<< - Merchert

* "The Indo-European expansion on the other hand happened later, after that Caucasian one.

Later when ? Later was the limited expansion of proto-Armenians.

Can you outline how this happened ? Where are the destruction sites ? Where is the new material culture ?

"The new results we got so far add nothing"

There is always the possibility they're throwing us a dummy, or setting the stage. But on balance it seems less probable based on what they wrote:

>However, our genetic data do not support this scenario. While we find steppe ancestry in Balkan Copper Age and Bronze Age individuals, this ancestry is sporadic across individuals in the Copper Age, and at low levels in the Bronze Age. Moreover, while Bronze Age Anatolian individuals27 have CHG / Iran Neolithic related ancestry, they have neither the EHG ancestry characteristic of all steppe populations sampled to date20, nor the WHG ancestry that is ubiquitous in southeastern Europe in the Neolithic (Figure 1A, 451 Supplementary Data Table 2, Supplementary Information section 1). This pattern is consistent with that seen in northwestern Anatolia11 and later in Copper Age Anatolia, suggesting continuing migration into Anatolia from the East rather than from Europe.

An alternative hypothesis is that the ultimate homeland of Proto-Indo European languageswas in the Caucasus or in Iran...<

Maybe they're re setting up for something. Which is possibly why poor Folker is just so upset.

@Rob: You realise how big Anatolia actually is and the spatial and temporal distances for this research are huge. So how many individuals were sampled? And again, these ideas about an earlier Anatolian IE presence are fine, but when, where and in which social strata exactly? Do we have the right samples in sufficient numbers? No.The ideas you quoted are as speculative as the ones before. We need samples from the proven IE elite. Before that, there is nothing which could contradict such a sound theory like the PIE steppe origin.Even more so, the Hittites were quite distinct in some respects from the surrounding non-IE by culture and ideology, which again would fit much better into the PIE steppe theory.

Northern Caucasus is not out of question to me, but only if they find EHG and R1x in Maikop. Otherwise how do you explain the lack of haplogroup J in all PIE/LPIE groups so far tested? That just makes no sense considering the culture and society of early IE. All serious theories consideirng Anatolian IE speak about the end of the 3rd and beginning of 2nd mill. Anything before that is just speculative. An expansion around 2000 BC is just the consensus and if some linguists before the reveleation of ancient DNA, in search for an alternative to the steppe theory, tried push the date back, that's not enough. You see how right they were in other parts of the world.

Let's just wait for more samples to come - hopefully from elite, proven IE burials after 2000 BC. If they speak about the alternative theories, thats reasonable. There are reasons to think about alternatives. But its one thing to keep those less likely alternatives in mind and another one to really prove or disprove something! If they get their hands on elite burials from Mycenaean and later Greeks, as well as Anatolian IE, then we will see.

Ric Hern said..."We see in with the Celts and Germanic tribes that some migrated through other tribes territories without hostility.

Could it be that Steppe people reached some kind of agreement with some Balkan tribes to move through their territories without disturbance to Anatolia ?"

If different regions were one of- optimal for crops- optimal for sheep/goats- optimal for cattlethen you might see a patchwork pattern of cattle herders being allowed to pass through one region to another.

iirc Greece is not a big cattle producer but if certain sub-regions are (or were) then it would be interesting to see if ancient samples from those sub-regions correlated with steppe ancestry?

(Thessaly was the cavalry producing region so maybe cattle too?)

secondly, if there was a copper connection of some form (artisans themselves or bodyguards or food producers) another possibility would be finding steppe ancestry in regions which used to have copper mines.

"Is there any reason why WHG or EHG could roam in almost whole Europe, but CHG were limited to Caucasus? They were chained to the rock?"

ecozones - although if that was the reason you might expect CHG-like populations to have at least originally existed in nearby, connected ish, similar mountainous habitats along the southern edge of the steppe like the Altai.

and maybe WHG/EHG were limited - maybe WHG extended in a thick band all around the coasts from north sea -> atlantic -> to med -> black sea while EHG were (at least initially) in the interior

"But we lack a realistic scenario about the genesis of this population [Yamnaya]."

i added a 3rd option to my list

1) farmers move onto the steppe catalyzing a herder population who eventually get strong enough to over-run the farmers leading to the male-female imbalance among the group who did it and that group became the founders of the rest. (this would imply a period before the ehg-chg mix.) not a very popular theory i know.

2) as (1) but the initial catalyzing of the herder population only involved a few families adjacent to the encroaching farmers leading to a massive founder effect - so a handful of CHG females were the mothers of all the rest

3) new theory (to be honest more of a screenplay for fun than an argument) especially for anyone who hates the idea of northern barbarians inventing anything clever...- some people from somewhere invent copper working and found Kultepe/Kanesh in anatolia cos it haz copper- get rich, threatened by neighbors so hire some mercenaries from steppe- 1st thread- mercenaries take over and start expanding in the direction of the best loot- 2nd thread- some of the mercenary dudes marry locally and learn about copper working- remember the region near the Urals with a lot of the same shiny metal- head back to the steppe with their Kanesh brides and start their own copper mine

Also of interest if you want to quote the current consensus, like in the The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia: (10,000-323 BCE), p. 709:

Where this putative common development took place cannot be determined on linguistic grounds. [...] Even the approximate date of entry of Indo-European speakers into Anatolia thus remains frustratingly indeterminate.

Nirjhar007 thinks that Davidsky's hypothesis about the origin of Y Hg R1a, particularly the origin of the Indian branches (and probably about the origin of the Indo-Aryans), are wrong and he is confident (or at least hopes) that ancient DNA from India proves him right (and proves Davidsky wrong). He means that Davidsky's theory comes to an end. This is a long sparring between them. (Note that the phrase "Davidsky's theory" does not mean in this context that this is his personal theory only. It actually has widespread acceptance.)

At this point I'm halfway through the comments on this absolutely thrilling episode, that I will gratefully watch from the sidelines. One point I would like to raise, though. For geneticists totally obvious: if anyone knows that everybody has parents, uncles, nieces and what have you, they do. Relationships diverge and reassemble, starting from scratch with old and new players, and produce a bewildereing variety of the same - and not quite the same - variations. I once read a John Hawks post in which he compared it to a river delta: a general direction of flow with a variety of dead ends and recursions.PIE is a concept that totally ignores this structure! Purely as a concept, that is. PIE has never existed! I think somehow not everbody has realised that yet. It cannot exist, because it has no ancestry! It has no siblings, it only has off-spring. So anyone trying to find a homeland for PIE might as well stop looking, for it is in fantasy-land.It seems to me that by now most people are aware of this, but it doesn't yet show in their vocabulary. So it's a matter of terminology. Let's give credit where credit is due: the PIE-concept has delivered many insights in the barbaric past. It has now quite outlived its use.Late PIE is a clumsy term, Hittite was an uncle, Luwian a cousin. Is that really helpful if you can't name the grandparents? HGC and EHG?? What language is that?? That's genes, for chrissakes. Let's keep it clean! We need a new apparatus now that the focus has changed, and access to new data has altered the perceptual landscape. Stop educating the masses on milk that's way past the date ...Easier said than done ...

PIE people had a specific genetic make up, ancestry, cultural and social profile. Actually thats even more important than the language itself, because the language was not the primary reason for the founders success, even though it might have played a role on its own and of course reflected the character of its bearers. Where the complete package arose is the most interesting aspect of the whole quest.

@batmanWhen you say (I don't think this text is yours, seems like a copy-paste from some random site):>>With the recent repports about the aDNA from SW Europe, SE Europe and NW Europe there's still no clean-cut evidence at hand. In fact, as the newly relased aDNA clearly reveals; the're is no need to place the IE Urheimat within the coldest part of western Eurasia, rather than the more stable and warm alternatives (far) west of the Steppes - where the milder climate and the major bulk of cultural sites, megaliths and artefacts from the last 10.000 years are found. <<

That's precisely why they dispersed as far West as Ireland and South as India: The Steppes are a shit place to live, and they had every incentive to get the fuck out of there.Also, recent post-2015 aDNA analysis points out that the Steppe expansions did very well happened towards Western Europe and Central-South Asia. Even Siberia and China saw an influx of Steppe.If anything, those recent aDNA findings only strengthen the Steppe hypothesis.

Now, many here started to "inquire" as to when, where, how, why, etc the Yamnaya came to be.If you look at Ancient North Eurasians, you'll see that they're already half-Yamnaya, mixed with a Siberian-Amerindian-SouthAsian population, and that's 36,000 years ago. This population also gave rise to the original "R" haplogroup.When Amerindians completely left the Eurasian Siberia, it's presence started to dwindle in the local populations - same thing for Onge, Papuan and Dravidians, who migrated South.Then, in the region, only the Yamnaya population remained, probably with unmixed individuals in their Westernmost territories, and that led the ANE's non-Yamnaya admixture to be extremely reduced, but we can still see little remnants of it on "modern" Yamnayans.

Now, 36,000 years ago, how they came to be? They simply mixed ancient EHG with ancient CHG, there's no mystery here, they were neighbours.And what about the origins of Early-Proto-Indo-European, or Proto-Indo-European, or Late-Proto-Indo-European? As far as I know, there are immense chances of EHG speaking Proto-Uralic, and CHG would be speaking Proto-Kartvelian, or Proto-Sumerian, or Proto-Elamite, or Proto-Harappan(Dravidian?) or whatever other language (I really don't like that there are 4 completely distinct isolate languages related to a tiny population squeezed together in the Caucasus), maybe all those languages even shared an ancestors called "Proto-Caucasian" (my speculation), who knows?Fact is, those two populations mixed and exchanged words and everything else and if they were together since at least 36,000 years ago, that gave plenty - really more than enough - time for it to evolve into a Indo-European ancestor language.

"Note that the phrase "Davidsky's theory" does not mean in this context that this is his personal theory only. It actually has widespread acceptance."

Note that it is a 150 year old asuggestion, formulated by German philologers and Scanianvian mythologers - such Victor Hehn and Victor Rydberg - both overly facisnated by the discovery of the Vedic texts and the recently discovered connections between the European and the Indian languages and myths.

Thus there were a rush to find some logical explanation to this connection, which gave rise to a possible explanation to the known, but still mystical (unexplained) civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. By the 1870's the idea of an oriental causation became a 'generally held view' - known as 'Ex Oriente Lux' - with a "URHEIMAT" in the geo-statistical mid-point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urheimat

Consequently another general assumption based on circumstance became a "widely held view" - as an "urheimat" for the I-E languages.

By including the Avestan/Persian culture, a number of Euroepan philologers would accept the "Persian-Caucasian area" as "the most reasonable" solution. Which made the irish linguist cross around the Steppe - where the myth-ridden horse-men of Xerxes, Attila, Djengis and Timur were known to have ruled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Schrader_(philologist)

As the more methodic scholars of European and American antrophosophy were able to establish effeective comparisions between the various mythologies this view faded - as the evidence brought to prove the Out-of-Steppe-theory was missing, while the comparative studies of the Eurasian myths gave quite different answers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Fairfield_Warren

After the autrocities leading up to WWII the North-European 'arians' became a non grata - and any suggestion about a 'nordic origin' became utterly stigmatized, by default. During the 1950-ies a lithuanian archaeloger were able to re-introduced the Steppe-theory, using the transit-phase of the Ukrainian pit-graves/tumulis - followed by an alledged 'proto-hunic horde of horsemen' - as a possible answer.

50 years later we are still waiting for a solid line of evidence, which is why a part of the genetic profession made yet another attempt. Today we're soon 20 years further - and a significant line of evidence is still not to be found.

With the recent repports about the aDNA from SW Europe, SE Europe and NW Europe there's still no clean-cut evidence at hand. In fact, as the newly relased aDNA clearly reveals; the're is no need to place the IE Urheimat within the coldest part of western Eurasia, rather than the more stable and warm alternatives (far) west of the Steppes - where the milder climate and the major bulk of cultural sites, megaliths and artefacts from the last 10.000 years are found.

Those who are saying the steppes were difficult to live in are simply ignorant of basic anthropology. Just because some place is 'cold' doesn't mean its difficult to live in. The steppic incomers were much, much better nourished than the settled agriculturalists they displaced. On the other hand the tropical rainforest is one of the most difficult habitats for humans to extract energy from, virtually all HGs living there are very short, and those with a long history there often evolve to become pygmies. You simply can't use your 'intuition' for this.

And Batman, are you incapable of understanding anything on this blog? How can paleolithic continuity in Europe be possible, when ~90% replacements have taken place in every corner of it at least once?

Whats all this stuff about 'dynasties'? How can simple tribal groups, or even HG groups support dynasties of any kind?

As Mathieson et al clearly shows; y-dna I, R1a and R1b are all over western Eurasia - including Ukraine and Russia - since Late Mesolithic. Moreover, the pioneering populations from the Early Mesolithic are all instrumental to start, establish and head the first cultures of post-glacian Eurasia - as they formed ealry dynasties of y-dna GHIJK/MNO in various parts of the continent. A short millenia before the first cowboys arrieves to the same areas, starting two new dynasties qnd thus populations. Both pqrt of the 'second wave' of the Euraian re-population, establishing cattle-farming and horse-breeding across the continent.

Using the principles of the Paleolithic Contination Theory we may clear up a few riddles of ancient antiquity by pLain and simple logic. Toay we may explain the recent discovery of ancestors to the cattle-famers - R1a and R1b - in a worthy context. Mesolithic have shared space with first Norse and North European (y-dna I) as well as their Anatrolian, Greek ad Roman cousins and herdsmen of y-dna G - over the last 10.500+ years.

Following the real climate-zones of norther Eurasia we may agin ask where the Eurasians would hav a chanc to survive the LGM and the YD. Moreover this climate-map can tell where the early pioneers went, as soon as the YD was over - and the caucasian peoples could reproduce again, to populate northern versus southern Europe, as y-dna G and I - supposedly without a mature language...?!

http://www.mappedplanet.com/karten/klima/januar_temp-eu.png

Just as these two lines of boatsmen and goat-herders proceed, speaking PIE, the y-lines of H,J and K/O would move east and south to interact with the tropical populations that had survived ice-time in the tropics - carrying full-fledged languages already.

As per consequence the PIE would have to merge with long held traditions of 'proto-dravidian' and 'proto-chineese' - leaving an end result that have been classified as 'non-IE'.

After 50 years of (modern) research there's still no answer to what (alledged) 'proto-european' that was spoken in Europe before the alledged 'invasion from the steppes'. So far we don't have even the slightest trace of any such language. Which means that any hypothesis excluding a paleolithic continuation in Europe, by default, creates a black-box situation that have no roots in reality.

Thus it's time to revise Maja's pet theory and start testing some other - rather than doing what haven't worked in a hundred years, all over again.

It's not clear if yamnaya is the origin of the all European branches of LPIE. Perhaps IE was spoken in the balkans before any steppe influence. What precisely in the data supports A yamnaya only hypothesis? Language can be acquired by migrants.

@Atrior Right, that whole LPIE didn't exist until recently. So giving the steppe theory a soft landing giving us clues and not just saying kaboom.Or just building suspense and saying PIE was born on the steppe.I think very highly of myself and that won't change wherever PIE comes from.

They are either being coy for drama as someone said, they don't know, they know and will surprise, or they will blunder. They read this blog so no use to spoonfeed them too much if they're still trying to figure it out.

If the upcoming Lazaridis paper does not reveal more information on the North Caucasus, we can still find out a lot more about patterns of genetic sharing among the peri-yamnaya types using Haplotype based methods, e.g. groups like BR1, various Balkan Neolithics and BA, Ukraine, Latvian, Russian Neolithics, Eneolithics, Balkan HG types. This will help to refine if Yamnaya had a strictly defined autosomal nucleus, extremely similar to Kalmykia and Samara Yamnaya, which is shared by all post-steppic groups, or a loosely defined one where SHG+CHG combinations found in Latvia_N playing, it would seem, important roles in the Balkans, are more important. If the latter, it would seem to show that CHG was more important to the genesis of LPIE as a whole than was hitherto assumed.

@postneo: The specific PIE genetic make up must be present in all early branche of IE, at least in the social elite. That's what we are talking about all the time. Mycenaean Greeks, Anatolian IE, Indo-Iranians etc. must have it. So far, what we always find is EHG + CHG with some hint of Anatolian Neolithic. So that alone, for that time, limits the possible candidates for the Urheimat. Out of India f.e. is out of question, because there was no significant gene flow from South Asia to the other IE people in that time frame. Since part of IE package is a patriarchal, patrilocal, agnatic family structure, the source should be clearly recognisable in the yDNA. Only very strange and unexpected turns of events could have produced another outcome which is not probable.

There are just three candidates left from my point of view, the Steppe, Caucasus or Iranian Plateau. However, steppe is by far the most likely to date. For LPIE its steppe for sure. Its about Anatolian IE alone and we still have no hard data for them.

No, obviously the so called LPIE expansion from the steppe did not just affect Northern Europe.

We also have ancient DNA evidence of it from Iberia and Italy, in the papers I referenced above, and modern-day evidence from South Asia. You know, like with lots of R1a and steppe admixture in many South Asians, especially those speaking Indo-European.

You two are clearly mentally constrained in some serious way. It would really suck to be you.

@ ZardosThey had multiple profiles. The whole package is only observed in the off-spring. Trying to pinpoint where all those lines come together in one particular location at one particular point in time is probably like chasing a ghost.